Sleeping With The Fishes

Chapter 9

As soon as we got back home I started getting ready for my date with Jason that night; we’d planned on going out to dinner at a local Italian place that was quickly becoming our favorite hangout.

After doing my hair and makeup, and deciding that I looked pretty good, I made my way down the hallway and back toward the kitchen. As I passed the laundry room, however, I heard Bee’s voice coming from inside, and I couldn’t help but take a peek.

She was sitting on top of the washing machine, with the four kittens sitting on the ground below. Her back was straight, her eyes boring into her subjects, who were all sitting in a line, all giving their adoptive mother all of their attention.

“I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of cats fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of dogs and shattered bits of kibble, when the age of cats comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Cats of the West!” Bee announced with passion.

I figured this was a sign I’d watched the Lord of the Rings movies a few times too many. Bee could recite Aragorn’s speech by heart, and yet she didn’t know who Beyoncé was.

Not wanting to intrude any more–and not really wanting to know exactly who Bee was going to war against, since it was probably me–I slipped past the laundry room and grabbed my purse before heading out to meet Jason downtown.

Jason was waiting for me outside the restaurant. It was a cute little place, with exposed brick, posters from Italy on the walls and quiet classic Italian music playing through the speakers. I’d known the family that ran this place my whole life, and as soon as we sat down we were greeted by a server who handed us our menus with a smile.

“Hi, I’m Jessie, I’ll be your waitress tonight. Can I get you anything to drink to start with?” she asked.

“We’ll have a bottle of red wine, whatever you recommend,” Jason said, flashing her a smile. I couldn’t help but notice the blush creeping up her neck as he did so; Jason tended to have that effect on women. But, to her credit, unlike others who were straight up hostile toward me, Jessie simply smiled at both of us and said she’d be back in a moment with the wine and to take our orders.

“So, let’s get straight to it,” I told Jason as I opened my menu. “Did you get the address from Chief Gary’s computer?”

Jason grinned as he leaned back in his chair. “Of course I did! After all, I had no real choice after you failed miserably, didn’t I?”

I stuck my tongue out at him for his gentle teasing. “I found out information about Matt Smith’s murder, though! So I wasn’t totally useless.”

“That’s very true,” Jason conceded. “You’re never totally useless anyway. You’re actually surprisingly good at investigation and intrigue, for a vet.”

I laughed. “How did you manage it?” After all, Jason didn’t have magic at his disposal to cause diversions the way I did.

Before Jason had a chance to reply, however, Jessie came back with a bottle of red wine from Tuscany, which she poured out for each of us before taking our orders. Jason ordered the house-made lasagne, while I went for the tagliatelle puttanesca.

“Ok, I need to know,” I said when Jessie finally left. “How did you do it?”

Jason grinned the widest smile I’d ever seen. “You’re never going to believe this. I asked him!”

“What?” I replied, my mouth dropping open. “You… asked?”

“Yeah. He mentioned the giraffe, I told him that you were trying to find out where it came from, he said if there was anything he could do to help to let him know. So I gave him the license plate number, he ran it through his system, and now we have a name. The truck belongs to a guy named Richard Steele, who lives at a property out in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of some place called Sister.

“Sisters,” I corrected automatically. “Wow. That really is the middle of nowhere. Sisters was a tiny community about three hours inland from Willow Bay. To be totally honest I had no idea what was there; I just knew it from having seen it on so many maps as a kid. I’d possibly driven through it once or twice before, but had no memory of the place.

“Yeah, that’s right. I looked it up. It has a population of two thousand people, and when I typed in the address Chief Gary gave me the farm looked to be about a ten, maybe fifteen minutes’ drive out of town. Google street view doesn’t even exist out there, that’s how isolated it is.”

I laughed. “I like how that’s now the benchmark of whether or not something is in the middle of nowhere: whether there’s a street view of it.”

“Pretty much,” Jason conceded. “I could literally do virtual tours inside of stores in New York using Google street view, and yet here there are areas whose streets aren’t even on there. If that’s not the middle of nowhere, I don’t know what is.”

“You’re such a city boy,” I teased as the waitress came by with our food. “I’m glad you got the info from Chief Gary, too. Thanks for that. Hopefully this way we can track down Lucy’s smugglers.”

Jason’s face turned serious. “I know, but please Angela, be careful. These people are smugglers. They’re not going to want you looking into their business. They’re dangerous.”

“I know,” I replied. “I promise, I’ll be careful.”

“If you decide to go over there, please make sure not to go alone. And if I can’t come with you, please at least text me and let me know where you are.”

“I will,” I said, digging into my pasta. “Don’t worry.”

“I always worry,” Jason said with a small smile as he took a bite of garlic bread. “I love you, and I don’t want you to get hurt, but I also know that saving that giraffe is important to you.”

“Thanks,” I replied with a smile. “Listen, after this is all over I think you should run an exposé on animal smuggling in the paper.”

“Oh yeah?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Definitely. I was reading up on it last night, and did you know that the black market for animal smuggling is worth over twenty billion dollars? It’s the second biggest illegal market after drugs. A baby chimpanzee on the black market can cost $50,000. I’d be willing to bet Lucy cost her previous owner nearly one hundred grand.”

Jason let out a low whistle. “Wow. I had no idea the market was that big.”

I nodded. “It is. A lot of former drug runners have gotten into the exotic animal trade since it’s also very profitable, but it’s a lot harder to get caught. For example, here in the states, while the DEA has 11,000 employees, the Fish and Wildlife Service only has under 400. And even the people who do get caught face penalties which are far less strict than those for people caught with drugs. If it’s your first offence, you probably won’t even get jail time.”

Jason shook his head. “Ok, you’ve convinced me. Although, I will add in the caveat that I write for the Willow Bay Whistler. Anything I write isn’t going to get the same kind of eyeballs on it that it would if I wrote it for the Times.”

“I know that,” I said. “But you’re the best reporter I know. If anyone can write something about the animal trade that will be amazing, it’s you. And even if only a few people get to read it, that’s still a few more people that will know about it than did before.”

“You got it,” Jason said. “But it will have to wait a few weeks, at least if you want prime positioning in the paper. No matter how amazing animals are, a dead body washing up on the shores of the bay is going to get the front page any week of the year.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” I replied. We ate in silence for a few minutes, enjoying our food, then Jason spoke again.

“Listen, I was thinking about something the other day.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I was wondering the other day what your thoughts might be about eventually moving in together?” My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. “No pressure, obviously. I wasn’t thinking straight away, either. But I wanted to plant the seeds of thinking about it for the future, maybe.”

“Yes,” I spat out almost immediately. “I think… I think we should definitely think about it.”

I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d replied so quickly, and without thinking. Because the more I thought about it, the more I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Jason. No, it definitely wasn’t that. It was just that I wasn’t sure what living with someone would be like, when I’d have to hide such an essential part of myself almost all the time. After all, living with someone wasn’t good enough to be able to tell them about your magical powers; you had to be married.

The Witches’ Council evidently wasn’t run by people who were knowledgeable about 21^st century customs.

And at the same time, I didn’t want to marry Jason without having lived with him first. Heck, marriage definitely wasn’t even on the table yet. Would I be able to hide my magic from him all the time? I had a tendency to use it to clean my clothes when I’d forgotten to do a load of laundry, or if I just wanted to save the environment a little bit. I had a tendency to use it to save my cooking when I’d forgotten about something that I left in the oven for too long. Would I be able to hide all of that from him for potentially years if we lived together? I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to. And I knew I didn’t want to.

Besides, what about Bee? I had conversations with her all the time. I’d have to be a lot more subtle about it, and I wouldn’t like that. I knew Bee wouldn’t, either.

“I’m glad you’re up for it,” Jason smiled at me. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. After all, my dad’s house is a pretty decent size for just one person, but I also understand how you might not want to leave the rancher.”

The house Charlotte, Sophie and I lived in had belonged to Charlotte and my parents; after their deaths Sophie’s mom had kept it rather than sold it so we could live in it as adults.

“Thanks,” I told him. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lived away from the rancher though. I spent years living away when I went to vet school, and I think the three of us always knew that it wouldn’t be a permanent thing. And of course, you never know, Charlotte might decide to move to Portland, and Sophie might decide to move out to live with Taylor.”

“That’s true, in which case I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to moving into your place, if that’s what you prefer. I just figured the girls probably don’t want me around as a permanent addition.”

I laughed. “It probably is a little bit too small for four people,” I conceded.

“There’s no rush though. Just felt like planting the first seeds. After all, in case you hadn’t noticed, I kinda like you,” Jason said with a grin as he reached across the table and put his hand over mine.

“I kinda like you too,” I replied as a blush crept up my face. And I knew I was absolutely, one hundred percent in love with Jason. I just wished I could tell him everything about me.